Opinion: Women just can’t win on Halloween.
Waking up on Tuesday morning last week, I might as well have been Cinderella’s carriage at midnight turning into a pumpkin for how excited I was that it was October 1. Finally Halloween season! Spooky movies, fall colors, little kids in cute costumes all hopped up on chocolate bars, caramel apples, and candy corn. Not to mention, everyone is a Bengal during Halloween with all the black and orange they wear. It’s the best time of year besides Christmas and I am stoked.
Even though there are so many highs during the Halloween season, there is unfortunately one major low that tends to really put a damper on my festive mood during October, and that is the realization that I once again have to find a Halloween costume.
Don’t get me wrong, I love dressing up for Halloween. It’s fun and festive and gives me an excuse to temporarily color my hair or wear a wig instead of having a mental breakdown and dyeing it pink during finals in a couple months.
The part that sucks is the expectations. Because I’m a woman there is so much pressure to dress and act a certain way on Halloween that is unrealistic and unfair.
If I dress up as someone like for example, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, sure, some people are gonna think that’s pretty cool and politically relevant, but there will be more people who will call me ‘boring’ for not going full ‘Halloween sexy’.
But if I do decide to go that route and dress up cute and flirty, I’ll get called a slut. I’ll be harassed all night and nobody will take me seriously.
I’m not saying I’m going to dress up as sexy RBG to try to meet in the middle, but I’m saying that if I did, it still wouldn’t be a happy medium.
Women truly can’t win when it comes to Halloween costumes.
And it’s not for a lack of trying. Walk through any women’s section at any Halloween costume store and try to find a costume that is both “comfortable yet not frumpy” or “sexy, but not slutty.”
There are so few choices for women when it comes to Halloween, that we end up having to make the decision between a Halloween costume so scandalous that you couldn’t wear in front of your parents, or a Halloween costume so embarrassing that you would only wear in front of your parents.
Please don’t misunderstand. I think that everybody should be able to wear whatever kind of Halloween costume their heart desires without fear of being judged or harassed. If you want to dress up as a sexy Keebler Elf, be my guest. If you want to dress up like a bowl of mac and cheese, more power to you. But unfortunately, we have to be aware that even though it’s not what we want, women still have to be conscious of the potential dangers that could arise from simply picking a Halloween costume.
Lisa Wade, a sociology professor at Occidental College, puts it perfectly when she says, “We’re not criticizing the women who make the choices, we’re just acknowledging that all of our choices are bad.”
I think Halloween is a great time for self-expression and creativity. The rest of the year, everyone is expected to dress and act a certain way, and if they deviate at all they are excluded from society as “weird” or “crazy.” Halloween is the one time a year where people should absolutely have the free power to dress however they wish without being judged or ridiculed. If society insists on taunting and bullying women every other day of the year, can’t we just have one day where we can dress up as sexy Spongebob and not have to wear a giant coat over it during the party and when we walk to and from our cars?
In the end, I think there are three rules that everyone should live by at Halloween:
It is okay for people to dress sexy on Halloween.
It is okay for people to not dress sexy on Halloween.
It is NEVER okay to harass women for either choice.
